She Can`t Find Pool -- It`s Submerged

OAKLAND PARK — Betty Bergmann went to her backyard pool Tuesday afternoon to take a swim. But there was this unexpected problem.

``I can`t find my pool,`` she said, her eyes scanning across her now- submerged back yard. ``I don`t have a pool anymore. It got flooded along with everything else.``

The diving board was hidden by almost a foot of water, along with a good part of the inside of her house, courtesy of a water main break one block away from her home at 361 NW 39th St.

``And to think I purposely left work early to go swimming,`` she said. ``Now I don`t even have to go outside. There`s enough water inside to do that.``

The break of a 54-inch water main, which turned the corner of Northwest 38th Street and Third Avenue into an urban version of Old Faithful, spewed 100 gallons of water a minute and flooded dozens of homes in an area of about 16 blocks.

The affected area was bordered by Powerline Road to the west, the Middle River to the south, Northwest 40th Street to the north and just west of Andrews Avenue to the east.

Some streets were flooded with as much as 2 feet of water as utility workers from Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park tried to repair the broken water main, buried almost 4 feet below the street`s surface. Meanwhile, children took advantage of the impromptu rapids, taking rides in rowboats. Some homeowners, many of whom had no flood insurance, wondered about their futures.

``I`ve been living here for 34 years and I`ve seen some pretty bad storms, but I`ve never seen anything like this,` said Harry Shugruecq, whose house at 3931 Northwest Third Ave., was damaged by several inches of water. ``Everything is ruined -- the washer, dryer, TV, the rugs, you name it.

``I got an apartment out back and it`s even worse than this house. Nobody can live there. Even my car, which was parked in the carport, got flooded. The inside of my car. Can you believe that?``

Art Marcano, 30, came home to his house at 650 NW 39th St. to find a new addition to his front yard. It was a tree belonging to his neighbor. Several tiles from his slate roof also had been torn off.

``What the hell?`` he asked, getting out of his car. ``What happened here, a hurricane?``

He was close. The broken water main wasn`t the only problem Tuesday afternoon as several residents said a tornado touched down during a brief but brutal storm a few blocks to the south in Wilton Manors.

The storm ripped trees from their roots, broke windows and toppled garbage cans. Even in Oakland Park, there were reports of mothball-sized hail.

``I was inside the house, and I heard the storm from my room. I saw the tree bowling over -- it hadn`t cracked yet -- and I went running outside. By the time I got out here, it was down, right across my car,`` said Don DeLeeuwcq, 32, who lives at 2942 NW Fifth Ave. in Wilton Manors.

The 50-foot tree, which was in his neighbor`s yard, crashed on top of his 1983 Toyota, smashing its windshield and causing extensive front-end damage.

``It was raining so heavy you couldn`t see a lot. But I could see swirling in the wind, you could see the swirling,`` said DeLeeuw, whose TV antenna also was damaged by the storm.

``There was garbage in the air, you could see it twirling around,`` said Sandy Knowles, who was staying at a friend`s house two blocks away at 2933 NW Sixth Terrace.

``I just heard this big crunch, and I looked out the window and saw this tree coming down. I looked out the other window, and there was another tree coming down. I stayed inside, on the bed.``

At the Publix supermarket near the intersection of Andrews Avenue and Oakland Park, gusting winds ripped off a 30-by-90-foot section of the building`s roof and shattered a 10-foot-square window.

``The wind just took a corner section and peeled it right back onto the middle of the roof,`` said Dave Tulley, a Publix field manager. ``I don`t know whether it was a tornado or not, but that`s a heck of a lot of weight to be thrown around.``

With shoppers still inside, a sheet of glass buckled and then exploded, showering glass into the frozen-foods section of the store.

``It just got windy as heck, and all of a sudden that window just blew out,`` said Frank Ratay, a store manager. ``We were very fortunate no one was hurt,`` Tulley said.

And there were those who made the best of a bad situation. Take, for instance, Mike Regan, who didn`t let the 2 inches of water in the guest room of his home at 140 NW 38th St. dampen his spirits totally.

``I could get mad, but instead I came out and started collecting some good sized fishing worms off my front lawn,`` said Regan, whose two dogs took refuge on a soaked couch he pulled out to the street after their dog house was flooded.